Fantasy and Identity: The Double Life of a Victorian Sexual Radical

Publication year
1993
Pages
265-302
Comment

The article discusses Irene Clyde's Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909), which is a work of utopian fiction which envisions "a world beyond gender" (268). In it the narrator arrives in an fantasy/science fiction country and "At the end of the novel [...] the narrator recognizes her love for one of her companions, whose permanent partner she intends to become" (267). Since "Scholars cannot cite forerunners of whom they are ignorant" (268) I felt it was important to add this item here, even though the novel in question is not discussed in great detail and I cannot therefore be certain what proportion of the plot is romantic. What is discussed in considerable detail is the identity and history of the novel's author.